Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel (ᛋᛋ) was the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, formed on 4 April 1925 as security guards at NSDAP rallies in Germany. Under the direction of Heinrich Himmler from 1929 to 1945, the SS grew into the foremost surveillance and state terror agency under Nazi Germany, with the Gestapo being a wing of the SS. During World War II, the SS was responsible for providing 900,000 troops to the front (the Waffen-SS, or "armed SS"), serving as security guards for concentration/extermination camps, and enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany. The SS' leaders were tried for several war crimes after the war, as they were responsible for the Holocaust and massacres of Allied Powers prisoners. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking SS officer to be captured, was hanged after the 1946 Nuremberg Trials.